The operation of modern society depends on the transmission of huge volumes of information from sources to remote receivers. Much of this information is transmitted in binary form, with most of the data being encoded according to one format or standard or another for transmission. Encoding can provide for bandwidth conservation, data encryption, error recognition and correction, and a number of additional advantages.
One particularly useful practice that is often employed in various transmission procedures is to send messages without requiring a response from a receiver. Such a practice simplifies data transmission because there is no need to wait for an acknowledgement and because there is no need to devote resources to sending, receiving, and recognizing an acknowledgement. However, such techniques increase the difficulty of recognizing errors because a sender of data has no way to know if the data was received correctly.